Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Con­struc­tion work on the 2.5-kilo­me­tre con­nec­tor road at Friend­ship Es­tate, from Cove Road to Store Bay Lo­cal Road at Canaan, came to a com­plete stand­still yes­ter­day, af­ter a High Court judge grant­ed an in­junc­tion to have all works halt­ed.

How­ev­er, Sec­re­tary for the Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Trevor James is vow­ing to com­plete the project, say­ing he will fight the in­junc­tion and per­se­vere.

The in­junc­tion came af­ter lawyers rep­re­sent­ing res­i­dent Derek Hearn, of Mill House 2, Friend­ship Es­tate, filled an ap­pli­ca­tion to stop the works be­cause it was af­fect­ing his es­tate.

Hearn’s prop­er­ty has an or­gan­ic farm, horse sta­ble, bee­hive, an old wood­en house, a well and two mills.

Hearn told Guardian Me­dia that lit­i­ga­tion was his last re­sort, as at­tempts to ac­cess ap­provals and the rea­son the road was need­ed with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) had been un­suc­cess­ful.

The in­junc­tion ap­pli­ca­tion said the land’s res­i­dents were not giv­en pri­or no­tice or con­sult­ed about the road­works. The con­struc­tion al­so be­gan with­out the nec­es­sary ap­provals and has dam­aged their prop­er­ty. Their lawyers ar­gue that the THA breached the Land Ac­qui­si­tion Act and did not con­sult with them.

How­ev­er, the THA claims the es­tate was ac­quired through com­pul­so­ry ac­qui­si­tion in 2009 and Hearn has no rights to the land. The THA al­so ar­gues that they did not re­quire plan­ning per­mis­sion for the project.

Al­though James said on Mon­day that ac­cord­ing to law, this project was ex­empt­ed and did not re­quire Town and Coun­try ap­proval, the in­junc­tion clas­si­fied it as “unau­tho­rised and con­trary to law; a fail­ure to sat­is­fy or ob­serve con­di­tions or pro­ce­dures re­quired by law (and) in con­flict with the pol­i­cy of the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Act”.

In the ear­ly phase of the project, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency al­so filed a case against the de­vel­op­ment for lack­ing nec­es­sary ap­provals. Ini­tial­ly, the court grant­ed the EMA an in­junc­tion to halt the road con­struc­tion, but it was lat­er lift­ed and a CEC grant­ed af­ter the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly ob­tained the re­quired ap­provals.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Hearn’s sis­ter, Se­ri­na, said the es­tate’s chat­tel house, the horse sta­bles and an­cient ma­chin­ery, all his­toric relics in To­ba­go, had been de­mol­ished. She said this could have been avoid­ed. She al­so rub­bished sug­ges­tions that their move was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed or sin­is­ter.

“This does af­fect my fam­i­ly. But my big­ger fam­i­ly of Trinidad and To­ba­go; it af­fects the in­tegri­ty of how things are done. We are a democ­ra­cy. We have rules of how we do things … I am sor­ry if Mr James thinks this is bac­cha­nal, this is not bac­cha­nal this is about law and or­der,” she said.

“The stan­dards is not be­cause some­body did it wrong, you can do it wrong. Its not a per­son­al thing. The CEC, is­sues by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency are very clear, it is not per­mis­sion to start the road. There were steps to fol­low.”

The CEC grant­ed to the THA said all ap­provals from the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion, De­part­ment of State Lands, De­part­ment of Nat­ur­al Re­sources and Forestry, Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty, Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty and Agency, and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice, must be ob­tained be­fore work could be­gin.

“Show­ing up on De­cem­ber 10 with bull­doz­ers and with­out giv­ing any­one a chance if wrong. Do you know how many equip­ment got de­stroyed that day, a life­time of hard work and his­to­ry got de­stroyed,” Se­ri­na said.

The in­junc­tion chal­lenges the THA’s unau­tho­rised pos­ses­sion and con­struc­tion works on the land with­out prop­er plan­ning per­mis­sion. It al­so seeks to over­turn the THA’s de­ci­sion, halt fur­ther con­struc­tion, and pur­sue com­pen­sa­tion for dam­ages.

Hearn’s at­tor­neys ar­gued that the THA’s ac­tions are il­le­gal, un­fair, and vi­o­late their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and the project must not go on with­out prop­er ap­proval.

Oc­cu­pant on the es­tate, Mar­co Kol­er, said the con­struc­tion had dev­as­tat­ed the an­i­mals and vis­i­tors.

“When they come back, they had bull­doz­er and give us 20 min­utes to move out every­thing. It was im­pos­si­ble to just move every­thing, and they just bull­doze every­thing. The horse start to pan­ic when they see the sta­ble be­ing de­stroyed. Be­cause there is no shel­ter for the an­i­mals any­more, one got away and we found it dead fur­ther out the road,” Kol­er said.

In re­sponse to the in­junc­tion, James said de­spite the ac­tions tak­en against the project in the past and in the fu­ture, it is des­tined to be com­plet­ed.

In a live Face­book post yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, James said, “We are go­ing to build it in less than a year, jump high or jump low. In­junc­tion yes­ter­day, in­junc­tion to­day, to­mor­row or not. We are go­ing to fin­ish. It des­tined to be so.”

He de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal at­tempt by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s To­ba­go Coun­cil po­lit­i­cal leader An­cil Den­nis to dis­cred­it the project.